Whistleblower Edward Snowden has a lot to answer for. Apparently he’s shared information with the press that suggests that playing games like Angry Birds could attract the attention of America’s main producer and manager of signals intelligence (SIGINT), the National Security Agency. If you’ve never heard of them because you’ve never skirted anywhere near the edge of danger, or if you have but you’re not American, they’re a government agency who operate under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense while reporting to the Director of National Intelligence.

While we’re not talking about the sort of Homeland-style counterterrorism that Claire Danes and Damian Lewis battle on the popular TV show, the idea that the NSA and its British counterparts (who are obviously so secretive that we don’t know their name) are exploiting vulnerabilities in mobile phone apps to spy on users is very concerning and makes us wonder what they could be getting out of it.

Quite what they’ll find when they look into a player’s Angry Bird app is a bit beyond anyone who’s not following the same career path as James Bond, but it’s pretty disturbing news. According to the report that first appeared in the Guardian, the spying is happening on apps found on Apple iPhones and mobile’s using Google’s Androidoperating system and all sorts of apps are being mentions not just Angry Birds.

The alleged operation is focusing on collecting and sorting massive amounts of user data but we’re not exactly sure what the US government want with a bunch of high scores. Joking aside, this is the sort of worrying development that movie makers have been thrilling us with for years. Perhaps Big Brother truly is watching our every move. At least when we’re playing Angry Birds.